News-Herald photo - SUSAN KEEN
Donna Caraci Rhoads, curator of the Pearl S. Buck House, stands with Regina Finlayson at the Author and Artist Luncheon presented by the Friends of the Samuel Pierce Branch of the Bucks County Free Library Tuesday afternoon at the Indian Valley Country Club.

Even stumbling can lead to a new painting for artist Patricia Wilson-Schmid.

That’s what happened while the Lederach resident was walking one day in the Poconos and fell, she told attendees at The Friends of the Samuel Pierce Branch Library’s annual Artist and Author Luncheon, held May 22 at Indian Valley Country Club in Franconia.

“I looked back and thought this would make a beautiful picture,” said Wilson-Schmid, who took a photograph, then turned it into a painting.

Inspiration can come from many places, including a horse she saw locally one day, then delicately turned the image of its rump sideways in the painting and titled it “Flank.”

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“It was a beautiful shape to work with,” Wilson-Schmid said.

Wilson-Schmid, who has been painting steadily since 1962, devotes her life exclusively to her art since retiring. She began teaching art in 1981 and now offers classes at Frederick Mennonite Community and at Encore Experiences in Harleysville.

She works in a studio in a converted barn with glass all along one wall and that is crowded with items accumulated over years.

Other paintings include local scenes, such as “Going Home,” which was based on the sunsets Wilson-Schmid remembers being able to see while looking from Route 113 toward Spring Mount in the days before newer development blocked out that image, and “East Branch of the Perkiomen,” a winter scene of the creek.

Other paintings by the self-described “Maine-iac” show scenes from that state.

One of those, titled “Seedling,” shows a large boulder with an accompanying seedling.

“Out of this rock, there’s a little tree starting to grow,” Wilson-Schmid said. “How they make it, I don’t know, but they do.”

Another of the Maine paintings, “Up for Repairs,” shows a boat clearly past its prime and out of the water.

“They don’t throw things away and get rid of them,” Wilson-Schmid said. “They just put them out back.”

The next of the three speakers was Heidi Radar, of Harleysville, an environmental educator with Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy, a research assistant with the Bioko Biodiversity Protection Program and author of the children’s book “Moon of Bioko: Sea Turtles of Bioko Island.”

Bioko, which is about 19 miles off the coast of Cameroon in Africa, has a wide variety of biodiversity, some not seen anywhere else in the world, she said. The island also has four species of endangered sea turtles, Radar said.

“Where I go, it’s a three-day travel overland from the nearest traffic light,” which is also the only traffic light on Bioko, she said.

To get there, Radar takes a boat, swims, then walks.

“That’s my house,” she said, showing a photo of a tent. Because of the heat, she frequently sleeps in a hammock, rather than in the tent, she said.

Bathing and laundering are also done in streams, she said. She and fellow researchers bring out and recycle items that can not be disposed of naturally. A hole in the ground accompanied by a shovel form the bathroom, she said.

Showing photos taken by National Geographic photographers, Radar said, “There’s tons of fabulous things” on the island.

Included in the photos was one of a spider.

“That was the biggest spider I’ve ever seen. It needed a leash. It was huge,” Radar said.

Radar will be returning to Bioko Island this fall to teach sea turtle conservation in elementary school.

Beginning and ending her presentation with the phrase “Life rarely comes to you ...” Radar showed a picture of her among a group of people pushing a boat from the beach on Bioko and encouraged people to make their own lives.

“My dream came true,” she concluded.

The third speaker was Donna Carcaci Rhodes, curator of Green Hills Farm in Hilltown, the former home of Pulitzer- and Nobel Prize-winning writer Pearl S. Buck. The home is now a National Historic Landmark.

Buck, who died in 1973, was a Pierce Library member and donor, Rhodes said.

Best known for “The Good Earth,” which is second only to “Gone With the Wind” as the most-read novel in the 20th century, Rhodes said, Buck also was involved with many other works, including movies, plays and short stories.

“She’s associated with about a thousand different publications,” Rhodes said.

Growing up an American in China, then feeling like a Chinese person when she returned to the United States for college, Buck knew about what it was like to feel prejudice and to be an outsider, Rhodes said.

“When you read her work, you really get this sense she is every person speaking,” Rhodes said.

Buck left China in 1934. Although she had helped show Chinese life to the world, she was barred from returning to that country when President Richard Nixon went there in 1972, Rhodes said. The reason Buck was not allowed to return was because the Chinese government at the time said her writings were anti-communist, Rhodes said.

Having a child with developmental disabilities and seeing the plight of mixed-race children helped shape Buck’s humanitarian efforts, Rhodes said. Those efforts included starting the Welcome House inter-racial adoption programs.

“In those days, those children would be totally unadoptable,” Rhodes said.

Pearl S. Buck International, which carries on Buck’s work, is now headquartered on the grounds of Buck’s former home. The house is also open for tours.

During her lifetime, Buck donated to libraries along with contributing to other causes, Rhodes said.

Richard Walsh, Buck’s publisher and second husband, brought paperback books to the United States, she said.

“These were the kinds of people that really had the idea reading should be accessible to everybody,” Rhodes said.

The Samuel Pierce branch of Bucks County Public Libraries is at 491 Arthur Ave. in Perkasie.